1. What is a ringtone?
A ringtone, or ring tone, is the sound made by a telephone to indicate an incoming call. Ringtones are normally stored in an end-user's mobile telephone, pager or other portable communications device and played whenever the device activates its ring or alert function (upon the arrival of a call, message or other notification).

2. Are ringtones in HotFreeRingtone.com are really free?
Yes. All ringtones and mobile wallpapers are absolutely free in this site. Please note that your wireless network provider might charge you for downloading the ringtones exactly the same way your ISP charges you to access the internet.

3. What are the basic ringtone types?
There are normally 3 types of ringtones: monophonic, polyphonic, and real sound ring tones.

Monophonic - Early phones had the ability to play only monophonic ring tones, short tunes played with simple tones. These early phones also had the ability to have ring tones programmed into them using an internal ring tone composer. Various formats were developed to enable ring tones to be sent via SMS text, for example RTTTL encoding.

Polyphonic - multiple notes can be played at the same time using instrument sounds such as guitar, drums, electronic piano, etc. Many phones are now able to play more complex polyphonic tones; up to 128 individual notes with different instruments are played simultaneously to give a more realistic musical sound.

Real sound ring tones - A new version of ring tones, often called either real sound ring tones, music ring tones, voice tones, mastertones, realtones, singtones or true tones, now use the Pulse-code modulation encoding of the real sound. The real sounds can be actual pieces of music, along with all lyrics and the entire song backing music, including backing singers.

4. What's the difference between RTTTL and MIDI ringtones?
RTTTL is a simple text based way of expressing ringtones, designed for monophonic phones. Most standard phones can handle between 35 and 70 notes in their ringtone. Midi files are complex files often containing thousands of notes, and many channels. This makes a midi file 'polyphonic'.

5. Can I convert monophonic ringtones to polyphonic ringtones?
Yes. Using our free ringtone converter, you can easily transfer monophonic ringtones (RTTTL format) to polyphonic ringtones (MIDI format).

6. Does my cellphone have a custom ringtone function?
Most popular cellphone brands support customizable ringtones, including well-known brands such as Nokia, Ericsson or Siemens but also Audiovox, Samsung, Panasonic and others.

7. How do I change my phone's ringtone?
It depends on the cellphone you have. Each company has its own system. Please make sure you check your users' manual or your carrier's web site before adding or changing ringtones. Some carriers (e.g., Ericsson), let you use a web-based composer for you to design your own ringing tones then manually input them in your phone. While most phones offer customizable ringtones nowadays, some models block users from adding ringtones themselves in a free, do-it-yourself manner, in some cases because the networks are asking them to do so, in order to force users to buy ringtones from them.

8. How many Ringtones can I put into my phone
It depends on your phones. Most models nowadays give you 3-5.

9. What is Smart Messaging?
It's a protocol designed by Intel and Nokia, and by which various software upgrades, including ringtones, can be made "over the air", through your wireless connection.

10. how can I make my own MP3 ringtones?
There're many software that can help you create your own ringtones.

Mobile Ringtone Converter is freely available for a trial. The coverter takes many different formats. You first import any sound file you have, then select the portion you want as a ringtone and then export in MP3, AMR, or MMF format.

Another similar software is Xingtone, but it only works with US networks.

11. Can I send a ringtone to my phone by email?